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Forum:Removing appearance section or modifying rules
The appearance section is a section found on articles of game components. This section describes how the subject appears, however, I believe we should either remove or modify the rules for the section. The reason I want to remove it is for these reasons: # - It was never really a true section: Okay, bad title for this point. What I would like to point out that, although I was the one who introduced the appearance section to the Nitrome Wiki, it was only there to increase the size of pages, in terms of bytes. That's all. I added it after this incident, in order to make pages big enough to not be merged into lists. # - No use: Appearance sections are completely useless. They describe how the subject looks. This is only helpful if the article lacks an image, however, there is is a very small amount of pages that have a written appearance section and no image. Furthermore, most articles have an image, so this makes the appearance section useless. # - Few are completed: It is quite likely that 90% of all appearance sections are tagged with Template:Incomplete. Now, I know you can't remove a section from the wiki on the grounds it is rarely completed, but appearance sections often are tagged with Template:Incomplete. # - Too big (sometimes): Appearance sections can sometimes be too big. There are a few articles that have an appearance section that is bigger than the game information section. This is rather bad, as people come to an article for information on its game information, and not its appearance. # - Not what people are interested in: People are likely not interested in what something looks like anyway. People come to an article seeking information about the subject, and likely not what it looks like. # - Clogs up page: Now, I know I'm likely getting a bit ridiculous here, but appearance sections, if people don't want to read it, then it just serves as wasted space which people skip anyway. It causes them to constantly scroll down a lot whenever they come to a new page, which could annoy some. For these reasons, I think we should remove the appearance section from all articles. We can still leave sections that describe how something looks like on Nitrome.com website articles, or articles related to this (as these tend to be complete, not very long, and are not always required). However, if people want to keep the appearance section, then we should make some changes. Currently, appearance sections require than you describe everything. If we were to change this, I would like to change it that you can use other words to describe content, such as "boots" to describe boots, and not have to say "boots" and describe everything on the boot. These are just my suggestions. Discuss. -- 02:05, January 13, 2014 (UTC) :YES PLEASE well it's about time. To be honest, I never really did like appearance sections, but I do have to admit they give some "meat" to a short article, especially for interactive objects and hazards. Without them, it's difficult to add sections within an article about a hazard that does only one thing (like spikes, which you could sum up in about three-four sentences). :I almost never read the appearance sections on this wiki. Many of them are unnecessarily elaborate. Why would I spend two minutes reading two paragraphs about what an object looks like when I could get the same information from staring at an image for two seconds? Do we really need to be told that a human has two eyes and a mouth, unless the case is different? :BUT WAIT. While I don't exactly like reading appearance sections, I do believe they are important to the article. They might be helpful for describing a character with multiple appearances (eg. how they look when they move) or, like you said, a picture isn't present on the article. Or who knows, maybe some people do prefer reading appearance sections over looking at an image, or the image might be removed by mistake or just doesn't display properly or quickly enough. After three paragraphs of rambling XD here's my point below: If we're going to keep appearance sections, we'll need to establish some guidelines here. Appearance sections should be concise, and they shouldn't be written in super explicit detail. Just a quick description that gives the reader a good idea of what this component of the game looks like, nothing fancy. Certainly don't make an appearance section longer than the Game information. 02:22, January 13, 2014 (UTC) :I agree with appearance sections, if we keep them, being concise but not super explicit. Making non super explicit appearance sections or removing them, I'm fine with either. -- 02:28, January 13, 2014 (UTC) Uh, is it okay for me to post my opinion? I'm not an admin (twiddles stubs) <:) I'll post my opinion anyway. I agree with NOBODY. I always waste my time trying to improve the appearance section of a page and then someone else comes and puts an 'empty' template even though I worked really hard on that section and covered everything about the object/character. Since there is almost always a picture, there's no need to describe it! So not only are these sections a waste of potential, it's unnecessary if the article has a picture! I think it is a nice idea. If we aleady have an image, it's pretty useless. Who would read the section instead of seeing the image? 13:51, January 13, 2014 (UTC) :Not really sure where I stand on this, but I wanted to point out that some users using an older tablet or similar device may have images disabled to reduce lag. Also, if we're going to remove the appearance section, we need to replace it with something. 14:11, January 13, 2014 (UTC) : I agree to remove the appearance sections, because when I add a new article, I always put because of my lack of adjectives... And I always try to put an image. Sometimes the objects, enemies or hazards get to have an undefined appearance, for when a reader comes by to read the section, things can become clear for them (as an example, although this might sound a bit ridiculous, I didn't know the flipside cars had their racers inside until I read the section and went back to the image). Also, appearance sections sometimes tend to contribute to articles lowering the possibilities for them to be article stubs. I don't support the appearance sections to remain long, though but to keep them simple without too many details. As it has been mentioned above, perhaps the rule should be that appearance sections have to be shorter than the game information ones. 16:55, January 13, 2014 (UTC) :Removing the appearance section would remove one of two sections within an article with the Appearance-Game information structure. If we were to remove the appearance section, what would the alternative be? Merging the remaining paragraphs back into a list of all components of the same type? 20:00, January 13, 2014 (UTC) I have spent many a hour contributing to the Appearance section of articles, and I believe they should stay for reasons that everyone has already mentioned (that's what I get for reading this a few hours too late). The appearance section, as you originally intended it to do, gives a lot of meat to the articles. If we take the section out, many many, articles will become stubs or near to it. Also, I always wrote these sections as if I was trying to describe it to someone who could not see the picture - which is sometimes what this section is actually read for. If someone is reading articles on a phone or something, and cannot view images, the Appearance section is where they can read to know what the article is talking about (because sometimes our titles can be a bit.... hard to decipher). They also make the article look a bit more "finished", or seem that it has every aspect of the component explained. The only real downside to Appearance is that many are unfinished because people are too lazy to write them, and they have the opposite of the aforementioned effect. No offence, but I don't really agree with any of your other points, NOBODY. 02:21, January 14, 2014 (UTC) :Ouch, Emite. You clearly haven't written enough appearance sections if you're going to call everyone who helps fill them in "too lazy" because they don't complete it. 04:14, January 14, 2014 (UTC) :I'm sorry if I don't write appearance selection, I'm not too lazy to write them it's just that I think you (everyone) are much better at writing them than me. :No, no, no. I didn't mean it at all like that. When I said "people are too lazy to write them", I meant that we, as a wiki (myself included) don't have the drive to write them. I meant it as a statement, not as an insult. How about I correct myself and say: "The only downside to them is that many are unfinished because they do not get written." 02:24, January 15, 2014 (UTC) ::Maybe users don't write appearance sections because it's not taken as a top priority. Appearance sections aren't the only headings that don't have a sufficient amount of information on them across many articles. Level sections have this issue too, although this may be because of a dispute over what should go in level sections that we're currently having. 02:42, January 15, 2014 (UTC) I don't think we should remove the appearance section entirely, but I do agree with NOBODY's suggestion to modify the rules for writing them. I think we should only describe the most basic and prevalent details of an object, such as colour or dimensions, as opposed to every detail, as many of you mentioned. (e.g. This enemy appears as a green dragon with red wings and a long tail.) This will help keep appearance sections shorter as well. So, basically, only write about the important or outstanding physical features of the object. -- 20:25, January 15, 2014 (UTC) I agree with this. 20:54, January 15, 2014 (UTC) I can live with that. 21:59, January 15, 2014 (UTC) Ayernam's idea sounds good to me. 22:25, January 15, 2014 (UTC) Sorry, but think of how many stubs we will have! Although, I do agree with making them shorter and less detailed. Pufflesrcute (talk) 23:51, January 15, 2014 (UTC) :Eh, I'm still against it, but I can live with having them down to their bare minimum I suppose. 02:15, January 16, 2014 (UTC) ::You want to remove appearance sections? What exactly are you against? 02:48, January 16, 2014 (UTC) :::No, I am against having them changed. 02:09, January 17, 2014 (UTC) Request for closure - Unfortunately it seems that the up-votes outweigh the down, so should we go for the whole "bare minimum" thing? 02:18, January 30, 2014 (UTC) :Why do you say "unfortunately"? Eh, it's probably a fault of me, but the up/down votes don't really say much themselves about the topic. Most users here agree with being concise, looking at the picture as a whole rather than scrutinizing every little detail and generating seven paragraphs worth of it. I forgot NOBODY commanded us to "Discuss" and not bring out the vote templates. I was just opposing the idea of removing the appearance sections entirely, especially when there was no alternative to not having an appearance section if it was to be removed. 05:10, January 30, 2014 (UTC) ::Because I was am in the same mind set as before about the appearance sections, probably because I'm just all caught up in being hurt about having spent so long writing those sections to have them chopped down. But whatever, this is better for the Wiki and I won't die or anything. 18:04, February 15, 2014 (UTC)